How to control your online reputation
It is surprising just how much information about your life could be on the Internet, such as your age, marital status, your estimated annual income, your home's value etc, are just a few of the intimate details about you that could be online.
Your online information could be viewed or used by nosy neighbours and potential new employers plus more worrying by stalkers and other criminals simply by doing a search about you online.
We all use the internet more and more these days and so we must manage and limit our online personal data to stop snoopers of all types and to manage our online reputation. While doing this we also may want to present a positive image of our selves for employers and business colleagues.
Managing your online reputation is not easy, but with some knowledge and persistence it you could do it.
How to remove unflattering and sensitive information
So how do you remove unflattering and sensitive information about yourself from the internet? Obviously the first thing you must do is find out what information is available about you online. Use all the main search engines to search for variations of your names. If you have a very common name then just add other information such as your town or city to your search string. Check through a number of the pages of search results as details about you may appear on subsequent pages.
As you find information about yourself keep a list of content you wish changed or removed as well as a list of content you may wish to promote.
You also need to create a list of old online accounts you no longer want to use. These old accounts may contain profiles or social networking pages that may come back to trouble you in the future as privacy rules for these site may change. If you no longer want an account close old accounts down.
Online databases and people search sites may also contain data about you, including sensitive financial details. This type of online data about you is trickier to remove because they obtain data from public records and they are often in the business of selling a complete file on you to anyone willing to pay for it. Every one of theses sites may have their own data removal instructions, so you will need to request your data removal from each of these sites in turn.
A lot of these sites make it hard or impossible to remove your data and because this data may have come from public records it could appear again later. So being successful in getting your data removed will not necessarily keep your data removed.
You must review your accounts on sites like Facebook and restrict access to information like your full date of birth, home address to just your family and close friends and delete or hide embarrassing posts.
It is also possible that unflattering information may appear on other web sites, which can be difficult to have removed particularly if it is factually correct. Try writing to the website owner and politely make your case highlighting any inaccuracies on their site.
Should the data on a website seem intentionally mischievous or nasty you could try contacting the main search engine sites as they may remove links from their searches. If it is particularly malicious you might also want to contact your lawyer.
Get a good online reputation
Cleaning up your online reputation can take weeks or months to complete. It may not be enough to get data removed you may also have to create good content to force down the not so good content about you to lower in the search results and gives you some control over what people will find about you and read online.
There are several things you can do to promote a good online reputation. Start by creating a profile on LinkedIn and other similar sites to list your professional accomplishments and links to other positive stories about you. You can then direct people to these profiles so people read information about you that you are happy for them to read.
Why not start a blog with Wordpress for example and possibly also get your own domain name if it is available. On this blog list your personal and professional interests, but only that data which you are happy to provide to the public.
How to simplify controlling your online reputation
You may want to control and protect your online reputation but feel you cannot do it yourself. In this situation you can use companies that can help do this for you. For a fee these reputation management companies will do all the work for your, one such company is Reputation.com.
Protect your privacy and reputation and define your online image with MyPrivacy and MyReputation Bundle at Reputation.com
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